Distorting
Fascism To Demonize Iran
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
30 November
2007
Payvand.com
In their frantic drive to pave
the way for a military strike against Iran, leading figures in the neoconservative
pro-Israel lobby have embarked on a vicious campaign of demonizing that
country by comparing it with the early years of Nazi Germany and its
President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with Hitler.
These champions
of war and militarism are the same trigger happy characters who helped
orchestrate the criminal war against Iraq on the basis of ghastly lies
and criminal fabrications of evidence. Instead of being held responsible
for all of the grisly lies and evidence manufacturing, they are let
loose to once again beat the drums of war—this time against Iran.
Top among
these civilian militarists are Norm Podhoretz, a senior foreign policy
adviser to the Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, Connecticut Senator
Joseph Lieberman, and the leader of Israel's Likud Party Benjamin Netanyahu.
These are part of the leading members of the "war party" that
include, among others, Vice President Dick Cheney in the White House
and Elliot Abrams in the State Department.
Podhoretz's
wild charges of fascism against Ahmadinejad, Iran, and Islam—at
times bordering on delirium and self-parody—are unabashedly spelled
out in his recently published book, "World War IV: the Long Struggle
against Islamofascism ." Although Elliot Cohen was the original
author of the concept of World War IV, Norman Podhoretz has been the
major popularizer of the concept. Describing the Cold War as World War
III, he sets out to explain both the rationale for the projected World
War IV and the strategies to win it.
To explain
the "looming world conflagration" that is allegedly predicated
on the conduct of militant Islam, he begins by asserting that "the
malignant force of radical Islamism" has as its objective "to
conquer our land" and to destroy "everything good for which
America stands." After a long and discursive detailing of how and
why Islam is incompatible with progress and modernization, and how it
therefore poses a serious threat to Western values, he then argues that,
"to fend off the menace of militant Islam," the United States
needs to resolutely engage in a long, drawn out war in the Muslim world
that can be called World War IV.[1]
Benjamin
Netanyahu has also frequently called upon the Bush administration to
launch a military strike against Iran on the grounds that, "like
Nazi Germany," it is a menace to world peace: "It's 1938 and
Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.
. . . Believe him [Ahmadinejad] and stop him. . . . This is what we
must do. Everything else pales before this." While the Iranian
president "denies the Holocaust," Netanyahu said, "he
is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."[2]
Senator Lieberman's
characterization of Ahmadinejad as being another Hitler is somewhat
subtle and indirect : "I'm proud that I co-sponsored that bipartisan
resolution calling for regime change in Iran because there are some
leaders you can't negotiate with. Look at what Ahmadinejad has said.
History reminds us in the case of Hitler and Osama bin Laden that they
said exactly what they ultimately did. . . . We need to be working with
people in Iran, who hate this government, to help them overthrow it."[3]
Anyone even
faintly familiar with the socio-economic and historical characteristics
of fascism would dismiss these wild accusations and characterizations
of Iran as bogus. Ahmadinejad differs from Hitler on a number of major
grounds.
To begin
with, Ahmadinejad is known as a grassroots leader or fighter, not an
agent or collaborator of big business, as would be the case with fascist
or fascistic figures and characters. Indeed, he came to power by challenging
and running against the presidential candidate of big business, whereas
fascist leaders like Hitler or Mussolini were promoted by big business.
Second, Hitler
represented an expansionist imperial power. By contrast, Ahmadinejad
(and the Iranian government in general) represent an anti-imperialist
challenge or force in the Middle East that harbors no expansionist ambitions
or territorial claims.
Third, Hitler
was an unrivaled and unchallenged dictator. He had complete monopoly
of power; not only commanding the German armed forces, but also controlling
all the branches of government and, indeed, the entire German society.
By contrast, Ahmadinejad is not a dictator; he is an elected president
without much power. The real power rests with the "Supreme Leader,"
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is commander in chief of all of Iran's armed
forces. Khamenei has the final say on all major foreign policy issues.
Ahmadinejad
is also constantly and relentlessly challenged by both the parliament
and the Judiciary. For example, the legislature rejected more than two-thirds
of his recommendations for ministers, which meant that it took nearly
a year before his cabinet was fully staffed.
As intelligent
and educated individuals, Lieberman, Podhoretz, Netanyahu and their
neoconservative cohorts must certainly be aware of these glaring differences
between Hitler and Ahmadinejad, or between today's Iran and the late
1930s Nazi Germany.
So, why are
they disregarding such obvious differences and deliberately obfuscating
the historic characteristics of fascism?
The answer
is clear: they want to justify another war of aggression, a military
strike against Iran.
The more
fundamental question, however, is why do they want to attack Iran?
The answer,
in a nutshell, is that the pro-Israel lobby is determined to eliminate
any and all obstacles to the continued occupation of the Palestinian
land. And since the lobby views Iran as one of those obstacle, it is
therefore driven to demonize that country as the next target of a military
strike. All other publicly stated or implied reasons such as national
interests, democratic ideals, Iran's nuclear technology, and the like
are simply harebrained pretexts for achieving this overriding goal.
There are,
of course, additional factors or forces behind the drive to attack Iran.
For example, President Bush and the neoconservative handlers of his
administration hope that, by accusing Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents,
they can blame their disastrous failure in Iraq on Iran. They also hope
that by expanding the war to Iran they can stifle or preempt calls for
accountability and/or impeachment of those responsible for the illegal
war on Iraq.
Another driving
force behind the plan to attack Iran is the armaments lobby and the
powerful Pentagon contractors who view the extension of war to Iran
as an unmistakable expansion of their economic fortunes. President Bush's
neoconservative policies of war and militarism have been a boon for
the arms industry and related businesses of war profiteering.
It is obvious,
then, that the major forces behind the war juggernaut against Iran are
driven not by the interests of the American people or "national
interests," as the champions of war and militarism claim, but by
some powerful special interests that converge on war and political convulsion
in the Middle East: the economic interests of the armaments lobby and
the geopolitical interests of the pro-Israel lobby.
Since the
interests of these two highly influential forces converge on war and
international conflicts in the Middle East, they often play into each
others hand in their pursuit of war and militarism in the region. More
importantly, however, they also coordinate their politics and/or policy
agendas to influence U.S. foreign policy in the area.[4]
Although
there is no formal alliance between these two powerful forces, their
collaboration can often be seen through their identical views of U.S.
foreign policy in the Middle East. Institutionally, this de facto collaboration
is carried out through a number of militaristic think tanks such as
Project for the New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute,
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Center for Security
Policy, Middle East Media Research Institute, Middle East Forum, Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, and National Institute for Public Policy.
A closer
look at the records of these militaristic think tanks shows that they
are set up to essentially serve as institutional fronts to camouflage
the dubious relationship between the Pentagon, its major contractors,
and the Israeli lobby, on the one hand, and the war-mongering neoconservative
politicians, on the other. Major components of the Bush administration's
foreign policy, including the war on Iraq and the plans to strike Iran,
have been designed largely at the drawing boards of these think thanks.[5]
It is ironic—indeed,
tragic—that hardline Zionist leaders, who constantly (and rightly
so) remind us to not forget the atrocities of fascism, so callously
distort the socio-economic and historical characteristics of fascism
in order to use it in the service of their short-sighted and misguided
agenda for the Middle East. They hope—in vain—that they
can permanently keep the occupation of the Palestinian land by force,
and that by destroying Iran and/or other opponents of occupation the
Palestinian question would somehow go away. Yet, as the late Albert
Einstein put it, peace can be achieved only by understanding, not force.
Calling Ahmadinejad
and/or Iran fascist is even more ironic (it is, in fact, a perfect case
of chutzpah) in light of the fact that the expansionist policies of
unilateral aggression promoted by the leading figures of Neoconservatism
are more akin to Hitler's policies of unprovoked invasion of other countries
than is Iran's foreign policy, which respects the sovereignty of its
neighbors and harbors no territorial ambition or military aggression
against any country.
Neoconservative
champions of war and militarism often use terms and adjectives such
as fascist or Hitler to characterize opponents of US-Israeli policies
in the Middle East in order to justify their agenda of "regime
change" in the region. Such wanton or opportunistic use of political
rhetoric for nefarious political purposes represents a gross misreading
of social structures and historical developments.
Fascism cannot
be defined or characterized capriciously; it is a specific historical
category that evolves out of particular socio-economic circumstances
or structures. It cannot be haphazardly applied to any socio-economic
system or political leader that is at odds with the neoconservative
agenda of regime change in the Middle East.
Nor can fascism
be reduced to the "sins" of political personas and individual
leaders of Nazi Germany, or the pathological problems of Hitler's mind.
While simplistic or obfuscationist judgments of this sort may succeed
in dressing in the uniform of Adolf Hitler the horrific acts that the
capitalist system can occasionally perform, such reductionist judgments
would not be very useful for the purposes of averting social conditions
that may lead to the recurrence of fascism.
Hitler was
not any more responsible for the rise of fascism in Europe than is President
George W. Bush for the rise of neoconservative militarists in the United
States, or for the control of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East
by the representatives of the military-industrial-Likud interests.
Some friendly
critics attribute the aggressive militaristic policies of militant Zionism
to the traumatic memories of fascism and the attendant brutalities that
were committed against Jewish people. Thus, political commentator Jim
Lobe writes, for example, "the horrific experience of European
Jewry in the twentieth century, culminating as it did with the Nazi
Holocaust, is critical to understanding the neoconservative mindset."[6]
While this
may explain radical Zionists' "mindset" and their policies
of unilateral militarism, it does not justify their plans of war and
"regime change" in the Middle East. Palestinians and other
Arab/Muslim people had nothing to do with the Nazi Holocaust. That these
peoples have been subjected to horrendous punishment for the crimes
committed by others simply defies logic—let alone any sense of
justice.
Hard-line
Zionist ideologues like Lieberman, Podhoretz, Netanyahu and their cohorts
in the misguided pro-Israel lobby, who sloppily coin terminologies such
as Hitler or fascism in reference to the opponents of their policies
of aggression, are misrepresenting fascism, drawing wrong lessons from
it, and punishing the wrong people for its crimes. With friends like
these fanatical Zionists, the Jewish people need no enemies!
Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of The
Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan
2007), is a Professor of economics at Drake University. For more information,
please visit: http://www.cbpa.drake.edu/hossein-zadeh.
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